Every multi-tenant e-commerce platform hits it at some point: brands want to run their own discount campaigns. And then the choice arrives.
Do you build something massively flexible? "Percentage or fixed amount or free shipping or product X free with Y, on the condition that the order total exceeds Z, only for customers who have purchased before, and not valid in combination with other campaigns except these three…"?
Or do you build something smaller?
We went with smaller. Here's why.
What we built
Brands on WeUniteBrands can:
- Create discount codes with a percentage or fixed amount
- Set a validity window
- Cap the number of uses per code
- Set a minimum order value
- See per campaign how many codes were redeemed and how much revenue it drove
That's it. No nested rules, no stacking logic, no bundle mechanics.
Why this covers 90%
We mapped the use cases brands actually asked for. By far the most common: "give my newsletter subscribers 10% off over the next two weeks" or "welcome discount of €5 on a first order above €30". You don't need twenty-five rules for that.
The cases where you do need that complexity — large seasonal campaigns with tiered conditions — are rare enough that they don't outweigh the cost of an unusable admin interface for everyone else.
What we saw elsewhere
A lot of platforms get lost here. They grow their configuration surface into a small programming language, and then brands end up only using the simple options anyway. You're stuck with the downsides of complexity (maintenance, bugs, confusing UI) without the upsides (because nobody actually exercises the advanced paths).
We don't want to go there.
What we are working on
Not everything is finished. We know that at some point we'll have to support stacked discounts — some brands want loyalty tiers or bundles. Those are coming, but only when they're actually asked for. Not preemptively, just in case.
The lesson
In product engineering, scope discipline might be the hardest part. The pressure to build "more" is constant — from brands, from sales, from yourself. But the best feature is sometimes the one you didn't build.
Simple discount codes that work, get used, and require no explanation — that's good product.